Europe would be wise to start investing heavily in its own communications tech.

That is actually one of Europe‘s strong suits: https://www.telecoms.com/5g-6g/nokia-finally-replaces-huawei...

Comparing national-origins of technology, plus a mention of Nokia, reminds me of this Transformers (2007) scene [0].

> "Oooh. Nokias are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the Samurai."

> "... Nokia's from Finland."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumNpJl-IeQ

European companies (basically just Nokia and Ericsson) account for about a third of the global telecoms equipment market, or almost half if you exclude China Telecom (which is a captive market for Huawei). The only US company in the top 10 or so is Cisco.

This is one area where Europe is pretty much fine, and one where the US seems rather vulnerable; unless the tarrifs are short lived or there’s yet another carve out, US infra will suffer, especially as 6G rolls out.

In pretty much all aspects of life, you gotta be careful presenting ultimatums. People might not respond with the answer you hoped.

Also strange to propose that there are only two options when Europe already has it's own up and running GEO and LEO satellite systems. It's not choosing US or China, it's chosen to expand their own systems.

(I wouldn't be surprised that Brendan Carr simply doesn't know what European options are available)

What's even funnier is that the actual upsell is of Musk's Starlink, lmao

Also, like, satellite simply isn’t _that_ important comms-wise. And European companies are huge in terrestrial and especially cellular. This is actually an area of vulnerability for the US; unless it adds yet another tariff carve out or scraps the tariffs, it’s likely to have cellular infra issues.

It's a false choice fortunately. The EU doesn't have to choose between a totalitarian state and a crumbling democracy that is currently threatening to invade and seize the territory of a EU member nation. They can, and should, choose their own products or those of other reliable and friendly trading partners around the globe.

read unpaywalled here: https://archive.is/CrpI2

The ultimatum hurts America even more when many well studied professionals are almost certainly starting to look internationally as a contingency plan for what is currently happening.

The potential for literally the same people who built the American systems to build the European ones is growing as this governments fist is tightening it's grip on power.

And the self-harm continues.

How long will it take for the US to recover from this madness, if ever?